Types of Hypnosis Practitioners

There are three major divisions within the field of hypnosis, each with their own approach, training requirements and practice methods. These three divisions are clinical hypnosis, stage hypnosis and forensic hypnosis.

Stage hypnosis is responsible for many of the images and concepts about hypnosis that are held by the public. The stage hypnotist, while using the techniques of hypnosis is actually providing entertainment, not therapy. Stage hypnosis relies on keeping a sense of mystery and fun in the audience, while carefully selecting participants who are willing, and have lowered inhibitions due to the perceived expectations of the audience. Nothing involuntary happens on the stage.

Stage hypnosis is an art form, and requires a great deal of skill and practice on the part of the hypnotist, and provides a high level of entertainment for participants and the audience. Unfortunately, it remains the most powerful depiction of hypnosis in the mind of consumers.

Clinical hypnosis is the application of hypnosis to psychological and medical problems. It is by far the oldest and most prevalent form of hypnosis, though it may go by other names such as visualization, stress management, guided meditation, etc. Clinical hypnosis may be applied to a wide range of symptoms and complaints, including anxiety disorders, eliminating habits such as smoking, reducing pain in dental work, controlling chronic pain, and even as part of wellness programs for cancer patients. Forensic hypnosis, a highly controversial technique, is the use of hypnosis in criminal investigations and to help witnesses remember details of crimes. Principles of hypnosis are also used during interrogations and can sometimes help to unravel an insanity defense.

What Can Hypnosis Help to Treat?

There are many different psychological, emotional, and physical issues, distresses, and disorders. It can be used for situations ranging from overcoming fears to relieving pain experienced after surgery. It has even been known to shorten the delivery stage of labor. It will also help to ease the suffering from a disease, among the disabled, and even among those with terminal illnesses. It has even been shown to assist in breaking addictions such as alcoholism, eating disorders, and smoking.

Children can also be helped by hypnosis, and are typically quite easy to hypnotize. The therapy can assist them in overcoming chronic asthma, bed wetting (medically known as enuresis) and other childhood issues. Teenagers, on the other hand, can be assisted in beating blushing and stammering problems that they consider embarrassing and make their lives harder.

Hypnotherapy is extremely beneficial with phobias and other irrational fears of all kinds. This includes people suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, obsessive behaviors, panic attacks, anxiety disorders, and other stress-related symptoms such as short tempers and insomnia. Any conditions that are aggravated by stress and tension, such as nausea, hives, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), eczema and psoriasis, and even excessive sweating and blushing, can be effectively treated using forms of hypnosis therapy.

Hypnosis is also used to treat sexual dysfunction, and for some individuals and couples to explore new areas of sexuality. This may include hypnosis for couples, feminization hypnosis, masculinity hypnosis, hypnosis used in dominant/submissive relationships and other similar applications.

Hypnosis Combined With Other Therapies

Hypnosis is commonly practiced by health care professionals. These include medical doctors, psychologists, dentists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists and others, both in combination with other therapies and as an at-home supplement. For example, doctors use hypnosis for pain control, psychotherapists integrate hypnosis into psychotherapy, dentists use hypnosis for pain control and anxiety reduction, while chiropractors, acupuncturists and massage therapists will integrate principles from hypnosis into their treatments. Combined therapies may involve a hypnotist working alongside the health care professional, or the professional may learn hypnosis. Self- hypnosis tapes may also be used during other therapy with excellent effect. Dentists, for example, will often use this approach.

What Can Go Wrong with Hypnosis?

Hypnosis itself is very safe. The hypnotic state is a safe state of mind, one that we drift into and out of almost every day. Hypnosis, however, is only a technique to attain a particular mental and physical state. When it is part of a larger effort to address a particular health or mental health problem, practitioner training is key to effectiveness. Simply because someone has learned hypnosis does not automatically qualify that person to address anxiety, phobias, pain and other potentially debilitating conditions. If you are considering hypnosis as a form of therapy, you should be sure that the practitioner has sufficient training and clinical experience. Good hypnosis with poor therapy can be a mixture that is unlikely to help and may, at worst, temporarily make a problem worse.

Issues of privacy are another important area of consideration. In seeking treatment for a particular condition, especially one that may be embarrassing or damaging to relationships, ascertain the practitioner's privacy policy in advance, before revealing sensitive details and confidences. In the U.S., depending on the state, confidential information given to a hypnotherapist may not be protected by the doctor-patient privilege enjoyed by licensed health care professionals.

Finally, hypnosis can mask serious illness. Self-hypnosis, for example, is quite useful in the control of pain, but also hides that pain from medical professionals who may need to see it as part of their diagnosis. For example, if you are experiencing a heart attack and use self-hypnosis to control and eliminate the pain in your chest and arm, you may later find yourself quite truthfully telling an emergency room doctor that you are not in pain. The doctor may, at this news, treat your condition with less urgency than if you mentioned chest pain radiating down your left arm. Never allow the power of hypnosis to interfere in full and honest communication with health care practitioners.